1. Dezember 2017 - 2. Dezember 2017

Veranstaltung Navigation

„World­wi­de about 200 blind pati­ents alre­ady recei­ved elec­tro­nic Reti­na Implant Sys­tems to res­to­re visu­al func­tions. It took several groups a more than 20 year long jour­ney of rese­arch and deve­lop­ment to the pre­sent appro­ved pro­ducts. In the begin­ning the­re was a lot of skep­ti­cism wit­hin the oph­thal­mic com­mu­ni­ty. Would this work, wouldn’t the­re be mas­si­ve com­pli­ca­ti­ons and many fail­u­res? As always with new tech­no­lo­gies it nee­ded some cou­ra­ge­ous peop­le to con­ti­nue even after several set­backs. Pati­ents alre­ady bene­fit from wea­ring such devices. Alt­hough in the begin­ning our expec­ta­ti­ons were hig­her and we thought that the impro­ve­ments in visi­on would be grea­ter, but what was achie­ved today is an important first step to over­co­me cer­tain forms of blind­ness using implan­ta­ble active micro­sys­tems. Others steps will fol­low to impro­ve the per­for­mance of visu­al prosthe­ses and to achie­ve bet­ter out­co­mes.

The 3rd Inter­na­tio­nal Sym­po­si­um of Arti­fi­ci­al Visi­on 2017 is plan­ned to pro­vi­de a plat­form for rese­ar­chers working in this field to come toge­ther, to pre­sent their recent work and to dis­cuss the results and con­se­quen­ces. It is also ment to dis­cuss new approa­ches and to find ways to fos­ter this field of rese­arch in the glo­bal sci­en­ti­fi c com­mu­ni­ty. The ear­lier mee­tings in Aachen were always plan­ned in bet­ween the 2-year inter­val of the Eye and the Chip Mee­ting in Detroit, USA. This year the orga­ni­zers in the US deci­ded to make the Detroit Mee­ting an annu­al mee­ting and we dis­cus­sed if we should dis­card the Aachen Mee­ting. But than we thought that the two mee­tings are dif­fe­rent in several aspects and that the Aachen Mee­ting should have its place.

This sym­po­si­um is a ful­ly open, non-invi­ta­tio­nal mee­ting. We encou­ra­ge ever­yo­ne who is working in the field of Visu­al Prosthe­ses or Arti­fi­ci­al Visi­on to pre­sent your work. We espe­ci­al­ly encou­ra­ge young rese­ar­chers to come to Aachen. For young rese­ar­chers we will have a num­ber of tra­vel grants avail­ab­le. To get a place in the pro­gram I am asking you to send in an abs­tract via the online abs­tract sub­mis­si­on sys­tem not later than by 1st Octo­ber.

As in the ear­lier mee­ting we will have ses­si­ons on tech­no­lo­gy, bio­phy­sics, mate­ri­al sci­ence, visu­al sys­tem dis­or­ders, pre­cli­ni­cal tes­ting and cli­ni­cal tri­als. The mee­ting will be sup­por­ted by RWTH Aachen Uni­ver­si­ty, which is one of the lea­ding tech­ni­cal uni­ver­si­ties in Euro­pe, and the Rese­arch Cen­ter in Julich, one of the lar­gest Rese­arch Cen­ters in Ger­ma­ny with a strong focus on Neu­ro­sci­ence and Tech­no­lo­gy.